[DISCONTINUED] I Believe

Prologue (Part 3)

The shadow dissipated and I dropped to the sand. We had headed towards the second star to the right and flew straight on 'till morning. When dawn came, the shadow faded and I fell. I rolled several feet down the beach, getting a close-up look at the sand.

I climbed to my knees and then my feet, brushing the sand off my pants and going to tuck my hair behind my ear out of habit before touching the short ends of the strands and ruffling it instead. I stretched, then put my hands in my pockets and started walking inland, taking in everything my senses gave me and preserving it.

I had gotten drowsy halfway across the ocean and I almost missed sight of the island. It looked like a magical place, with a mermaid lagoon, an Indian encampment, and a pirate ship in a cove. There was mountains and jungle and rocks protruding from certain places in the water. It was exactly the way I thought it would be.

"Halt!" a boy's voice commanded. I stopped walking and tilted my head slightly to the right to hear better. There was rustling in the bushes to my left. I pulled out my knife but didn't attack, leaving it in the sheath. I crept over to the bushes and peeped over them. There was a set of blue eyes looking right back at me, and the eyes fell away as I fell backwards in slight shock. I thought it would just be an animal or something.

"Who are you?" I asked, my voice trembling.

"I'm Peter Pan," the owner of the eyes said boastfully, standing fully.

My jaw dropped. "Whoa..."

He had bright blue eyes and dirty-blond hair*. He looked like he was twelve, just like me. His clothes were kind of green, but definitely not like in the movies. He was wearing regular brown pants and a green shirt. He didn't have shoes and his clothing was ragged and outdated, covered in dirt. He had dirt smeared on his face, and I almost wrinkled my nose. He needed fresh clothes and a bath. He was holding a dingy dagger, but it looked sturdy enough and sharp enough. For what, I couldn't tell you.

"Hi," I said, pushing my shoulders back and no longer slouching. "I'm Li- Lion ((Lee-on))." I almost said 'Lilliana', but I stopped myself in time. "But my friends call me Lee."

"Hi there, Lee," Peter said jovially. "Welcome to Neverland."

I grinned. "Cool!"

"The shadow brought you here?" he asked.

I nodded. "Yep. I played a game with it where I had to jump out my window really far and grab its hand to get here."

Peter looked excited. "Really? None of the other Lost Boys have a story like that! Hey boys! We got a newcomer!" He made a motion like 'come over' with his arm and boys in regular clothing, mostly dark colors, but that could have been the filth that coated them like a second skin, came out of the bushes. They had fur hats on, of different animals. They were all twelve or younger. Some of them were adorable, but they all carried knives, even one that looked to be my little brother Ethan's age, about five. But then again, we were all too young to be carrying knives, really. Especially as weapons.

The littlest boy tugged on my coat sleeve and pointed to the knife wrapped in sewn-together rags in my hand. "What's that?"

In answer, I stepped back and unsheathed it. The shiny blade as long as my whole arm gleamed brightly in comparison to their rusty old ones. I held it high above my head. "It's my knife," I said proudly. "I stole it from my mother myself!"

Peter's face darkened when I said 'mother', so I added on to my sentence. "I hate her!"

They all gasped.

"How can you hate your mother? We had one once. She was nice. But then she left," said a tall one in maroon.

I scowled. "My mother was mean. So I told her I wanted to chop off her head!" I yelled, making a slicing motion with my sword, as I began to think of it. "I didn't, but I told her I was going to!"

They whooped and clapped me on the back. Someone slapped a fur hat on my head and then they touched my backpack. "What is it?" one asked in fascination.

"It's my backpack." I pulled it off and hugged it to my chest. "It has all my worldly possessions in it," I said, pronouncing the words carefully to make sure I got them right.

I unzipped it and pulled out a hammer. "This is the hammer I got stuck in my forehead once," I said eagerly, showing them the twin horizontal lines in my forehead, merely small pale scars. They reached out to touch the scars and the hammer. "It hurt a lot," I said with pride. "But I didn't even cry!" Mostly because I was going into shock and couldn't feel anything, but still.

I pulled out a long, thin shard of glass. "This is a piece from the mirror my nanny broke just by looking in it!" they looked at their reflections as they passed it around, some slicing their fingers on the edge. Peter admired himself for a long time.

"What else do you got in there?" Peter asked.

I noticed he closed his hand around the mirror and held out my hand for it. "I want my trophy back," I said stubbornly. "Gimme the mirror first. And who took my hammer?" I took it from someone's unwilling grasp and took the mirror too, bits of blood dripping from tiny cuts on my hands. I wrapped it in a piece of fabric and put it back.

"Nobody can touch my stuff," I warned. "It's mine, I stole it. It took me a long time to get all this stuff." I snapped the tiny suitcase lock with the number combination on the zippers, locking it closed. "This is the only way to open it. And I locked it, so you guys can't."

"Do you have any stories?" a fat boy asked.

I thought. "Well, I know a lot of fairytales. And I read a lot of books. And I like making up stories sometimes too. So yes."

"Can you tell us one?" As we talked, we walked into the shade of the forest and between two tree roots, down into a large burrow.

I sat on the dirt floor and they sat around me. "I can tell you about Santa Claus, and the Easter Bunny, and the Tooth Fairy, and even the Sandman! He's the one that makes you fall asleep at night! And he flies around in this yellow -no more like gold,- airplane, and it goes vrrrmm, raaaaa," I continued with the sound effects and made motions with my hands as I talked. "Or I can tell you tales of pirates, of pretty girls, princesses, princes, I can tell you stories of Peter Pan and the Lost Boys in Neverland, even-"

"I want to hear the story of Peter Pan!" They started pitching in, all voting for the Peter story.

I looked over at the main character warily. He had a spark of interest in his eyes, but he was leaning against the wall and cleaning his dagger. He was clearly sensitive about mothers, so I started with an adventure story, my voice so low they had to lean in to hear me. "Once upon a time, there was a boy named Peter. Peter Pan..."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
*this is always how I thought Peter Pan should look, plus it's a bit OUaT-ish, appearance/attitude-wise.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Yeah I'm bored
I guess it's update day in art class!
-iamanawesometaco